Editor’s Note: The following comments were distributed to the members of a forestry discussion group and forwarded to Northern Ontario Business as Letters to the Editor. They form a response to an article based on comments made by University of British Columbia professor Dr. John Innes at the 2006 Forestry Leadership Conference in Toronto in March (“Responsible forestry companies aren’t being recognized: UBC prof”) that ran in our May issue.

To the Editor, Northern Ontario Business:

Responsible forestry is not the function of public forest harvesting licensees any more than long-run vehicle maintenance is the responsibility of someone renting a new car at the airport for a week’s business visit to Vancouver.

Responsible forestry criteria measure the owner’s, not the industry’s, appalling stewardship performance.

In Canada, public forest owners transfer huge subsidies to loggers by setting abysmal expectations and ignoring the consequences of their resourcist land management. Only for public relations consumption do we pretend our timber is traded to licensees for long-run forest-centred stewardship. All public forest performance audits demonstrate that commensurate forest stewardship is the rare exception rather than the defining public policy objective.

Governments dedicated to maximizing the appearance of forest economic activity are entirely undeterred from transferring diminished forests and environmental and economic consequences to future generations.

It has been my long-term experience that UBC and its corrupt ilk primarily exist to staff the ranks of apologists, paid to window dress this plunder of our natural capital. Responsible forest stewardship cannot result from an underlying policy to maximize and/or balance the industrial interest in resource exploitation. On the other hand, short-term stewardship of the industrial interest can be very effectively achieved by ignoring the environmental and industrial consequences of our forest practices and policy objectives. Which do you think is taking place?

Michael Major
Victoria, B.C.